Influenced from a wide variety of languages (Southeast Asian, East Asian, Germanic, and Romance), Melanian is a conlang I've been working on for at least three months. My past attempts to produce this language were failed, most likely because of my lack of knowledge in linguistics back then.

My friend and I were supposed to create this language together, but we both created totally different versions of it, so mine came out as Scandinavian Melanian while his turned into Romanian Melanian (we couldn't think of any better names). My Melanian is considered Scandinavian because it's mainly based on Swedish and Finnish. However, this is subject to change, considering I tend to insert some Latinish words here and there and throw in a couple of Asian.

Consonants- Consonant combinations of more than two do not exist, except in loan words and foreign names.

- Consonants with similar sounds almost never go together

- Ć, K, P and T also sound like /ʨ/, /k/, /p/ and /t/, respectively, when they appear in unstressed syllables of a word.

Words- Words with two to three syllables are almost always stressed on the first syllable.

- Toning is very flexible, so the way a word is toned doesn’t change its meaning.

- Double lettering is a minor feature in the Melanian language, sort of like Finnish. That means “kina”, “kiina”, “kinna”, “kinaa”, “kiinaa”, “kiinna”, “kinnaa” and “kiinnaa” all have different meanings (although I didn’t assign any meanings to each of the words yet).

- Individual letters can be counted as syllables, so instead of having “Me-lan-je” or “Me-la-nje”, you can have “Me-la-n-je” or even “M-e-l-a-n-j-e”. However, this depends on the speaker and can only be used on nasal letters.

I’m not sure where to start from here, so I guess I shall start with pronouns and verb conjugation.

First of all, several of the vowel letters have multiple values (e.g. /y/, /ɯ/ and /ɨ/ for y). Your "rules of sound" should explain under what conditions one of these values is used and not the other. By the way, I'm not even sure if these value represent distinct phonemes or only allophones. (And if you don't know what those terms mean, you should look them up.) The convention is that letters between /slashes/ represent phonemes and those between [brackets] are phones, but in your post you use slashes for the unreleased allophones of ć, k, p, and t.

Second, the alphabet in general seems geared to making maximum use of diacritics rather than ease of use. Why, for instance, ł for /w/ when w is free? The reason ł represents /w/ in Polish is that up until a very recent sound change, this letter was pronounced [ɫ] (a velarized alveolar lateral approximant)--and, in any case, w was already in use for [v].

Third, you need to tighten up your rules for geminates (double sounds). It beggars belief that every sound in your inventory can be both long and short. Take ŗŗ, for instance. I've never heard of any language that contrasts /ɹ/ and /ɹ:/. On the other hand, it's very common for a contrast of /r/ and /r:/ to be realised in some other way than [r] vs. [r:]. Many languages (e.g. Spanish, Basque, Albanian) have [ɾ] (an alveolar tap) vs. [r] (a trill), for instance. With that in mind, r /ɹ/ vs. rr /r/ makes a great deal more sense than what you have (and dispenses with another pesky diacritic!).

Fourth, you need to take more about syllable structure. You say that complex consonant clusters don't exist, but you don't mention if there are any restrictions on where the two-consonant combinations occur, let alone what consonants they involve. For instance, is ktorr a possible word in your language? What about člogđ? Nothing in your rules as written forbids these.

That's probably enough for now. Let me know if you have any questions.

linguoboy wrote:First of all, several of the vowel letters have multiple values (e.g. /y/, /ɯ/ and /ɨ/ for y). Your "rules of sound" should explain under what conditions one of these values is used and not the other. By the way, I'm not even sure if these value represent distinct phonemes or only allophones. (And if you don't know what those terms mean, you should look them up.) The convention is that letters between /slashes/ represent phonemes and those between [brackets] are phones, but in your post you use slashes for the unreleased allophones of ć, k, p, and t.

Second, the alphabet in general seems geared to making maximum use of diacritics rather than ease of use. Why, for instance, ł for /w/ when w is free? The reason ł represents /w/ in Polish is that up until a very recent sound change, this letter was pronounced [ɫ] (a velarized alveolar lateral approximant)--and, in any case, w was already in use for [v].

Third, you need to tighten up your rules for geminates (double sounds). It beggars belief that every sound in your inventory can be both long and short. Take ŗŗ, for instance. I've never heard of any language that contrasts /ɹ/ and /ɹ:/. On the other hand, it's very common for a contrast of /r/ and /r:/ to be realised in some other way than [r] vs. [r:]. Many languages (e.g. Spanish, Basque, Albanian) have [ɾ] (an alveolar tap) vs. [r] (a trill), for instance. With that in mind, r /ɹ/ vs. rr /r/ makes a great deal more sense than what you have (and dispenses with another pesky diacritic!).

Fourth, you need to take more about syllable structure. You say that complex consonant clusters don't exist, but you don't mention if there are any restrictions on where the two-consonant combinations occur, let alone what consonants they involve. For instance, is ktorr a possible word in your language? What about člogđ? Nothing in your rules as written forbids these.

That's probably enough for now. Let me know if you have any questions.

1. The /y/, /ɯ/ and /ɨ/ for Y are allophones. I haven't decided the conditions where one of the values are used and not the other, yet.

2. Ł is used for /w/ instead of W because I choose to have it that way. W is only used in loanwords.

3. Every sound in my inventory can be both long and short (except for H, I just realized it wouldn't make sense to have H be both long and short). Look at the Finnish and Japanese language, most of their letters (or sounds I should say in the case of the Japanese) can be long and short.

StorSteg wrote:1. The /y/, /ɯ/ and /ɨ/ for Y are allophones. I haven't decided the conditions where one of the values are used and not the other, yet.

In that case, it would be clearer to adhere to the convention of using brackets for the allophones and slashes for the phonemes. Pick one value--say /y/--to represent the phoneme and then only mention [ɯ] and [ɨ] once you've set the conditions under which they occur.

2. Ł is used for /w/ instead of W because I choose to have it that way. W is only used in loanwords.

Is there a historical reason for this or is it completely arbitrary?

3. Every sound in my inventory can be both long and short (except for H, I just realized it wouldn't make sense to have H be both long and short). Look at the Finnish and Japanese language, most of their letters (or sounds I should say in the case of the Japanese) can be long and short.

Okay, first of all you need to stop talking in terms of "letters". Forget about them for the moment; orthography is not integral to language.

Second, you're dead wrong about Japanese. None of the voiced sounds can be geminated except /n/ and /m/. In particular, the flap ([ɺ] before back vowels, [ɾi] before front) is never geminate. The statement is more accurate when it comes to Finnish, but even here there are exceptions, e.g. voiced obstruents (e.g. /d/, /v/) and semivowels (/j/).

But in case you haven't noticed, your language has an entirely different phoneme inventory than either Finnish or Japanese. So there's no reason to assume that the same rules would apply to the segments of Melanian as apply in those languages anyway.

StorSteg wrote:Well, here are the first bits of it:- Individual letters can be counted as syllables, so instead of having “Me-lan-je” or “Me-la-nje”, you can have “Me-la-n-je” or even “M-e-l-a-n-j-e”. However, this depends on the speaker and can only be used on nasal letters.

Why would you Pronounce each letter individually? I'd think people would pronounce words are shortly as possible un less you are exaggerating a word. Also /l/ isn't a nasal.

I – JakI (if you’re a boy, optional) – PomI (if you’re a girl, optional) – ĆanI (if you’re older than the listener) – PangI (if you’re younger than the listener) – OnI personally don't know any language where the First Person Singular is changed for the listeners ageYou – DauYou (if the listener is a boy, optional) – PoiYou (if the listener is a girl, optional) – KuiYou (if the listener is older) – NiiYou (if the listener is younger) – NuuAgain, I don't know of any language that use pronouns that are both gendered and reflect the listeners age. Or that have gender and a neutral. How complex are these rules such as an older girl, younger girl, older boy, and younger boy. When do you use Dau?He – KatShe – KetHe/She – Hän -I don't understand this when you have he/she/it already? Is this like a general you?It – DätWe (including you) – NosWe (excluding you) – Vi - This would be plural you.You (pl) – Vos - Spanish, eh? But when you have five pronouns for singular you, it seems a little strange to have only one second person plural pronoun.He (pl) – KataShe (pl) – KetaThey – DamPlural He and Plural She would be they. Are there three third person plurals: masculine, feminine, and neuter?

Objective Pronouns

They’re the same as the subjective pronouns. So “I” and “me” would be “jak” in both situations.What's the sentence order? It is very important since your subject and object pronouns are the same. Unless verbs are inflected, which most of your tenses seem to be.

Native: English (NW American)Advanced: Spanish Intermediate: French Beginning: Arabic (MSA/Egyptian) Some day: German

dtp883 wrote:I personally don't know any language where the First Person Singular is changed for the listeners age

Again, I don't know of any language that use pronouns that are both gendered and reflect the listeners age. Or that have gender and a neutral. How complex are these rules such as an older girl, younger girl, older boy, and younger boy. When do you use Dau?